German History Vol. 28, No. 4, pp.

498514

REFLECTIONS
Beyond the National Narrative: Implications of
Reunification for Recent German History
Konrad H. Jarausch

1 www.tagesspiegel.de/meinjahr89; Henrik Bispinck et al. (eds), Programm. Geschichtsforum 1989/2009. Europa

zwischen Teilung und Aufbruch (Berlin, 2009). Cf. Konrad H. Jarausch, People Power? Towards a Historical
Explanation of 1989, forthcoming in a volume edited by Vlad Tismaneanu.
2 Jens Hacker, Deutsche Irrtmer. Schnfrber und Helfershelfer der SED im Westen (Berlin, 1992) versus Heinrich
Potthoff, Im Schatten der Mauer. Deutschlandpolitik 1961 bis 1990 (Berlin, 1999).
3 Richard Schrder, Die wichtigsten Irrtmer ber die deutsche Einheit (Freiburg, 2007) versus Kurt Ptzold, Anschluss
mit Abwicklung, Weltbhne (9 April 1991).
4 See the contradictory interviews by Wolfgang Schuble and Edgar Most in Adolf Haasen, Toward a New Germany:
East Germans as Potential Agents of Change (Bloomington, 2009).

The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the German History Society.
All rights reserved. doi:10.1093/gerhis/ghq107

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The elaborate celebrations of the twentieth anniversary of 1989/90 have contributed

surprisingly little to illuminating the meaning of this caesura for contemporary history.
During 2009, eye-witness accounts, media specials, international conferences and political
speeches sought to enshrine the inspiring dissident narrative of a peaceful revolution by
East German citizens as the official interpretation.1 During 2010, commemorations are
bound to focus instead on the more controversial recovery of national unity through
Helmut Kohls leadership, and the help given by Mikhail Gorbachev and George Bush
through embedding German reunification in a wider restructuring of Europe. In spite of
all subsequent difficulties, there is ample reason to celebrate that the Sozialistische
Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED) dictatorship was overthrown, and the subsequent accession
of the five new states to the Federal Republic. Yet such self-congratulation tends to serve a
conservative agenda that silences criticism of the process and its consequences.
Far from being settled, the questions of how to interpret the fall of the Wall and the
return to a national state have set off a fierce ideological contest over public memory. For
instance, the Christlich-Demokratische Union (CDU) claims that Konrad Adenauers antiCommunist magnet theory deserves the chief credit for reunification, while the
Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) points instead to the subversive effects of Willy
Brandts change through convergence in his Ostpolitik.2 Similarly, most Western
commentators see the toppling of the SED regime as overdue liberation while many
disappointed Eastern intellectuals complain about being annexed and subsequently
colonized.3 Though Cold Warriors tend to blame most of the transition problems on the
rotten legacy of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), critics of the Left instead
emphasize the mistakes of the unification process, such as the rapid privatization by the
Trusteeship Agency.4 At stake in these debates is the chief historical lesson of the failure
of communisma conservative neo-totalitarian understanding that equates the SED
dictatorship with the Nazis, or a leftist commitment to anti-fascism that fears the
structural and ideological continuities of the Right.

Beyond the National Narrative: Implications of Reunification for Recent German History 499

5 Hans-Peter Schwarz, Das Ende der Identittsneurose, Rheinischer Merkur (7 September 1990); Thomas Nipperdey,
Die Deutschen drfen und wollen eine Nation sein, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (13 July 1990).
6 Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Die Gegenwart als Geschichte (Munich, 1995); Konrad H. Jarausch, Normalisierung oder
Re-Nationalisierung? Zur Umdeutung der deutschen Vergangenheit, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 21 (1995),
pp. 57184.
7 Jrgen Kocka (ed.), Die DDR als Geschichte. Fragen, Hypothesen, Perspektiven (Berlin, 1994); Kocka, Hartmut
Kaelble and Hartmut Zwahr (eds), Sozialgeschichte der DDR (Stuttgart, 1994).
8 Heinrich August Winkler, Der lange Weg nach Westen (Munich, 2000; English translation: Germany: The Long Road
West, trans. Alexander Sager, New York, 2006), 2 vols.; Edgar Wolfrum, Geglckte Demokratie. Geschichte der
Bundesrepublik von ihren Anfngen bis zur Gegenwart (Stuttgart, 2006); Eckart Conze, Die Suche nach Sicherheit.
Eine Geschichte der Bundesrepublik von 1949 bis zur Gegenwart (Munich, 2009).
9 Konrad H. Jarausch and Martin Sabrow (eds), Die historische Meistererzhlung. Deutungslinien der deutschen
Nationalgeschichte nach 1945 (Frankfurt/Main, 2002).
10 Konrad H. Jarausch and Thomas Lindenberger (eds), Conflicted Memories: Europeanizing Contemporary Histories
(New York, 2007). Cf. also the debates on transnational history on HGerman and HSK.
11 Konrad H. Jarausch, Kollaps des Kommunismus oder Aufbruch der Zivilgesellschaft? Zur Einordnung der friedlichen
Revolution von 1989, and Martin Sabrow, Die DDR im Gedchtnis der Gegenwart, both in Eckart Conze,
Katharina Gajdukowa and Sigrid Koch-Baumgarten (eds), Die demokratische Revolution 1989 in der DDR (Cologne,
2009).

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Blindsided by these events, historians have been unable to provide a corrective, since
they have themselves struggled to integrate the Wende into larger accounts of postwar
development. While conservatives such as Hans-Peter Schwarz initially hailed the end
of the identity neurosis, moderates such as Thomas Nipperdey interpreted 1989/90 as
the completion of the national liberal struggle for freedom and unity of the nineteenth
century.5 Distressed that their post-national agenda had been overturned, critical
historians such as Hans-Ulrich Wehler concentrated on beating back a neo-conservative
effort to renationalize German historical consciousness through a normalization
campaign.6 But lack of prior interest in the GDR made it difficult for scholars such as
Jrgen Kocka to fit real existing socialism into a broader history of Western
modernization.7 Because they were not trained in East German history, historians such
as Heinrich August Winkler, Edgar Wolfrum and Eckhart Conze continued to write
West German-centred postwar syntheses, hardly incorporating the GDR and treating
the events after 1990 as a mere coda.8
A recent shift in topical interests and methodological approaches has also kept many
historians from engaging with the origins, course and consequences of 1989/90. For
instance, Holocaust sensibility focuses on the war-time genocide and considers later
developments merely in terms of memory; gender studies, which look at constructions
of femininity and masculinity in longer time frames, are just beginning to explore
German division; finally, concern with post-colonial questions addresses the imperialist
roots of racism, but pays little attention to postwar events.9 At the same time the current
move towards European, global or transnational issues transcends the nation state and
ignores its surprising return in 1990 as something that needs to be left behind in order to
move on to broader questions.10 While social history and cultural studies can contribute
to explaining the peaceful revolution of 1989 with concepts such as civil society or
recovery of authentic language, an analysis of the unification process in 1990 seems to
require more traditional political and diplomatic approaches, which interest few younger
historians on either side of the Atlantic.11

500 Konrad H. Jarausch

I. Explanations of Reunification
Since the reunification of the two successor states after four-and-a-half decades of
division was by no means foreordained, this surprising development requires a more
systematic explanation. In contrast to Bismarcks conquest of Germany, the restoration
of the national state in 1990 was neither the product of a powerful national movement
nor the result of three successful wars.15 Instead, scholarship is divided between those
analyses which highlight the contribution of the democratic awakening in East Germany
and those accounts which privilege the manoeuvring of governments in Bonn,
Washington and Moscow. Stressing the self-liberation of GDR citizens in the first
successful German revolution has the merit of focusing on the popular agency which
overthrew the SED dictatorship, but cannot explain the form of subsequent unification.16
Emphasizing the political struggles and the diplomatic negotiations of the great game
between the major powers has the advantage of looking at the domestic dynamics and
international shape of the settlement, but fails to give credit to the initiators of the issue.17
One of the ironies of the grass-roots explanation is that the peaceful revolution did
not even aim at reunification at the beginning. The systematic policy of demarcation
(Abgrenzung) by the SED and consistent Stasi vigilance had put any thought of restoring

12 Wolf Lepenies, Folgen einer unerhrten Begebenheit. Die Deutschen nach der Vereinigung (Berlin, 1992).
13 Timothy Garton Ash, 1989!, and Velvet Revolution: The Prospects, New York Review of Books (5 Nov., 3 Dec.
2009).
14 Andreas Roedder, Deutschland einig Vaterland. Die Geschichte der Wiedervereinigung (Munich, 2009), p. 376 ff.
15 Otto Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany: The Period of Unification, 18151871 (Princeton, 1963).
Cf. Ronald Speirs and John Breuilly (eds), Germanys Two Unifications: Anticipations, Experiences, Responses (New
York, 2005).
16 Ehrhard Neubert, Unsere Revolution. Die Geschichte der Jahre 1989/90 (Munich, 2008), p. 13; and Ilko-Sascha
Kowalczuk, Endspiel. Die Revolution von 1989 in der DDR (Munich, 2009), p. 544.
17 Alexander von Plato, Die Vereinigung Deutschlands. Ein weltpolitisches Machtspiel: Bush, Kohl, Gorbatschow und
die geheimen Moskauer Protokolle (Berlin, 2002). Cf. Roedder, Deutschland einig Vaterland, p. 49.

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Two decades after the overthrow of the SED and German reunification, the
consequences of [this] undreamt-of event therefore remain surprisingly
underexplored.12 No doubt its actual unfolding has been well documented by a stream
of memoirs and by numerous empirical studies, based on access to secret documents,
primarily in Eastern files.13 But in contrast to the acute fears surrounding the revival of a
German national state at the time, historians have made little effort to reflect on its
meaning for their longer-term narratives. Typical of this complacency is Andreas
Roedder who concludes his survey of this historical miracle by stating that the East
German civic movement stood in the tradition of national liberal aspirations of the
nineteenth century, by aiming at popular sovereignty, freedom and national unity. From
this perspective, reunification was merely the delayed achievement of Western normality,
finally ending the special path (Sonderweg).14 But the multitude of unexpected postunification problems also indicates the need to ponder alternative framings that might
provide a more critical understanding.

Beyond the National Narrative: Implications of Reunification for Recent German History 501

18 Neubert, Unsere Revolution, pp. 50, 239 ff., 310 ff.; Kowalcuk, Endspiel, pp. 3933, 46162, 528 ff.
19 Michael Richter, Die friedliche Revolution. Aufbruch zur Demokratie in Sachsen 1989/90 (Gttingen, 2009), vol. 1,
pp. 20, 397, 497, 621, 810. This is the most thorough empirical study of shifting popular sentiment on the local level.
20 Konrad H. Jarausch, Die unverhoffte Einheit (Frankfurt/Main, 1995), p. 137 ff. It is important to decode these
multiple associations in order to understand the popular motivation, which was not free from illusions.

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national unity beyond the pale, since Honecker rejected Kohls reference to a common
nationality and chose to interpret his 1987 visit to Bonn as recognition of the existence
of two German states. Moreover, within the system-immanent opposition, many
dissidents genuinely believed in socialist values and saw some of the consequences of
capitalist competition with horror. Only those who voted with their feet by joining the
mass exodus to the West in the summer and autumn of 1989 sought reunification on an
individual level by escaping to the more successful system of the Federal Republic.
Contrary to exaggerated claims after the fact, only a few dissidents, such as Edelbert
Richter, dared speak of unity, while the great majority of the platforms of the emerging
opposition groups, such as the Neues Forum, Demokratie Jetzt and Sozialdemokratische Partei,
were oriented towards reforming the GDR.18
Only with the fall of the Wall on 9 November 1989 did the possibility of unification
move from a pipedream to an actual political possibility. The excited population
interpreted the partly intentional, partly accidental lifting of the barrier between East
and West Berlin by Honeckers successor Egon Krenz as a victory of pressure from
below. Moreover, the first visit of millions of East Germans, aided by welcome money
(Begrungsgeld), revealed the drastic difference in living standards between a decaying
GDR and a prospering Federal Republic (FRG), with the latters glittering commercial
surface hiding some of its structural problems. As a result of the first-hand experience of
the West and of the warm welcome, the demonstration slogans in Leipzig and other
cities shifted from we are the people to we are one people in mid-November. The
formerly silent majority of the population itself began to speak out for unification,
forcing the opposition groups to revise their platforms frantically so as to include plans
for a step-by-step rapprochement of the two German states. It was not the dissidents, but
the GDR citizens who drove this crucial shift in priorities.19
It is important to recall that the prospect of reunification had different meanings,
depending upon age and relationship with the SED dictatorship. For the older
generation, it signified the restoration of a natural state of things, as they had been
before the division. For many of the younger cohorts, it suggested exciting possibilities
for consumption, popular culture and travel which had hitherto been denied to them.
For political opponents of the regime or committed Christians, it promised the end of
obnoxious repression and discrimination. For supporters of the SED, the bloc parties
and the many auxiliary organizations, however, it threatened many hard-won privileges.
Unlike in the neighbouring nation states, the progression from reforming socialism to
abolishing it altogether imperilled the very existence of the GDR because, as the head of
the partys institute for social sciences Otto Reinhold mused, without socialism there was
no need for East Germany. In a way, reunification became a collective exodus with
citizens leaving the Communist realm for the Western system without changing their
place of residence.20 To many East Germans, unification appealed as the quickest road
to prosperity and freedom.

502 Konrad H. Jarausch

21 Richter, Die friedliche Revolution, vol. 2, pp. 1035 ff., 1294 ff., 1452 ff.; Neubert, Unsere Revolution, pp. 363 ff.
22 Helmut Kohl, Erinnerungen (Munich, 2004), vol. 2; Horst Teltschik, 329 Tage. Innenansichten der Einigung (Berlin,
1991); Andreas Wirsching, Abschied vom Provisorium, 19821990 (Munich, 2006).
23 Philipp Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, Germany United and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (Cambridge,
Mass., 1995); Frederic Bozo, Mitterrand, the End of the Cold War and German Unification (New York, 2009).

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Ultimately, the election of 18 March 1990 sealed the East German choice of unity by
democratic means. The round-table negotiations between Krenzs successor, the
weakening Modrow, and various opposition groups were still busy searching for a Third
Way by turning the letter of the GDR constitution into a lived reality. The restive
population therefore welcomed FRG leaders such as Helmut Kohl and Willy Brandt,
and the fragmented pro-unification initiatives, such as the Demokratischer Aufbruch,
were willing to affiliate with Western parties, forming a rather heterogeneous Alliance
for Germany. To compensate for control of the government and media by the Partei des
Demokratischen Sozialismus (PDS), the pro-unification groups accepted professional advice
and financing from the Western parties in their election campaign, which contrasted
starkly with the imaginative amateurishness of the dissident Bndnis 90. The
overwhelming outcome, endorsing rapid unification, was therefore a fairly accurate
reflection of the majoritys wish to join the successful West.21 Hence interpretations
focused on the internal dynamics rightly stress that the initiative for unification came
from disgruntled GDR citizens, but they slight the help of outside leaders to bring it
about.
By analysing domestic politics and international diplomacy, an entirely different
strand of literature explores Chancellor Helmut Kohls decision to seize upon this
opportunity. It shows that the CDUs rhetorical professions of desire for reunification
had grown hollow through the decades and were no longer backed by any practical
preparations. West German politicians therefore reacted with confusion to the spectacle
of the mass exodus and demonstrations in the East until Kohl began to link the promise
of economic help to the need to reform the GDR. It took the chancellor three weeks after
the fall of the Wall to work up the courage to make reunification an operative goal in his
famous Ten Point Plan of 28 November, which sketched a progression of steps from a
confederation to an eventual federation of both Germanies. The uproar caused by this
modest suggestion at home and abroad demonstrated that it would be necessary to
overcome considerable internal scepticism and external resistance in order to end the
division of Germany, because such a move threatened to undermine the entire postwar
order in Europe.22
Most authors agree that the international community responded rather ambivalently
to the prospect of reunification, due to historic fears of a strong Germany. While people
in many countries shared in the joy of the democratic awakening, the governments of
the victor powers and smaller neighbours remained wary. The only real support came
from the administration of George Bush, which saw the collapse of communism as a
chance to advance US influence in Europe, as long as Germany remained in NATO.
Caught in memories of the Second World War, British Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher remained opposed, while French President Mitterrand vacillated before
deciding to channel the process in a European direction.23 The key figure was Mikhail

Beyond the National Narrative: Implications of Reunification for Recent German History 503

24 Vladislav M. Zubok, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union and the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill,
2007). The role of Gorbachev is still hotly disputed with most Russian analyses highly critical and German monographs more charitable.
25 Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Rebuilding a House Divided: A Memoir by the Architect of Gemanys Reunification (New
York, 1998). Cf. also Werner Weidenfeld, Aussenpolitik fr die deutsche Einheit (Stuttgart, 1999), passim.
26 Wolfgang Schuble, Der Vertrag. Wie ich ber die deutsche Einheit verhandelte (Stuttgart, 1991); Theo Waigel,
Unsere Zukunft heit Europa. Der Weg zur Wirtschafts- und Whrungsunion (Dsseldorf, 1996). Cf. Wolfgang
Jger, Die berwindung der Teilung. Der innendeutsche Proze der Vereinigung 1989/90 (Stuttgart, 1998),
passim.

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Gorbachev, since the Red Army still had almost half a million soldiers stationed in the
GDR. Initially hoping that Modrows reform attempts would help stabilize his client
state, the Soviet leader had no fall-back strategy in case they failed. His rhetoric of a
common European house made it difficult for him to refuse Bonns insistence on the
East German call for self-determination.24
Commentators generally portray the so-called two-plus-four negotiations, combining
the victors of the Second World War and the two German states, as a Western success
story. Much to the chagrin of the Italians, Poles and Israelis, this forum excluded the
smaller countries in order to be able to reach an agreement more quickly. In these talks
the experience of West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher succeeded in
resolving several smaller crises, whereas the neutralist influence of East German Foreign
Minister Markus Meckel remained negligible. On the issue of the Eastern border of a
unified Germany, the combined pressure of the international community forced a
reluctant Chancellor Kohl, who did not want to lose expellee votes, to accept the OderNeie line as final. On the question of the future military alliance, Gorbachev ultimately
conceded that the Germans could stay in NATO, since a multilateral engagement would
be preferable to armed neutrality in central Europe. Surprisingly enough, many East
European dissidents also supported reunification in the hope that lifting the Iron Curtain
would reopen their own road to the West.25
The internal and external strands of development eventually came together in
another set of rather unequal unification treaties, symbolized by Helmut Kohls bulk
overshadowing the diminutive East German Prime Minister Lothar de Maiziere. The
international window of opportunity was limited by the instability of the Soviet Union
and the progressive collapse of the planned economy, and this ruled out a lengthy
constitutional convocation according to paragraph 146 of the Basic Law and privileged
rapid accession of East Germany to West Germany according to paragraph 23, which
had first been used with the Saar in 1956. Based on the nineteenth-century precedent of
the Zollverein, a currency, custom and social union on 1 July 1990 transferred the Deutsche
Mark (DM) to the East in order to stem the flood of internal migrants by offering access to
Western consumer goods. Even more complicated was the comprehensive unification
treaty, which regulated the transfer of the Federal Republics institutions to the East,
because all sorts of unforeseen questions such as abortion rights, property restitution and
the Stasi files evoked strong emotional responses. Nonetheless, sufficient agreement
emerged for the five new Eastern states to join the FRG on 3 October 1990.26
A brief comparison with the founding of the Reich in 1871 shows that the second
unification differed markedly, since it merely restored a prior national state, albeit in

504 Konrad H. Jarausch

II. Outlines of the Berlin Republic

Since reflection on united Germanys development during the period 19902010 is just
beginning, historians are still groping for interpretations that go beyond media
commentary. In contrast to the old Federal Republic associated with Bonn, some authors
have adopted the label Berlin Republic to signal not just the shift of the capital but also
the new quality of political culture and the growth of international responsibilities.
Though there is a plethora of social science collections with interesting essays on
particular questions, historical narratives such as Manfred Grtemakers recent synthesis
are still relatively rare.28 These preliminary explorations suggest that the story can be
told in two different ways. Most accounts focus on the rather problematic consequences
of unification for the economy, society and culture, highlighting the adaptation
difficulties of the new citizens. Less frequent are analyses that also point to an entirely
new set of problems related to the effects of globalization, the challenge of international
terrorism and the like. How might the confusing events following 1990 be framed in
historical terms?
Supporters of reunification usually point out that the transfer of Western political
institutions through accession to the Federal Republic seems to have worked relatively
well. Certainly the extension of the Basic Law to the new states was a gain, since its
protection of human rights transformed an arbitrary legal system into a functioning
state under the rule of law (Rechtsstaat). The importation of a parliamentary democracy
was also by and large positive, because it organized political competition between allGerman parties and the SED successor PDS according to accepted electoral rules and
produced stable governments. Moreover, the revival of federalism in the East built on the

27 Speirs and Breuilly, Germanys Two Unifications, passim. Cf. Neubert, Unsere Revolution, p. 438 and Roedder,
Deutschland einig Vaterland, p. 117.
28 Klaus Schroeder, Die vernderte Republik. Deutschland nach der Wiedervereinigung (Munich, 2006); Wolfgang
Schluchter and Peter E. Quint (eds), Der Vereinigungsschock. Vergleichende Betrachtungen zehn Jahre danach
(Weilerwist, 2001); and Manfred Grtemaker, Die Berliner Republik. Wiedervereinigung und Neuorientierung
(Berlin, 2009).

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diminished size and chastened form. Instead of being a product of Bismarckian

Realpolitik, reunification was a reward for the double fulfillment policy of Adenauers
integration with the west (Westbindung) and Brandts Ostpolitik, which integrated the FRG
in the West and allayed multiple revanchist fears in the East. The second time around it
was not Prussia that put the rest of Germany under the authoritarian Hohenzollern
crown, but the Federal Republic that brought Western forms of political participation,
economic prosperity and cultural freedom to the East by popular request. Even if there
was no constitutional convention, the process was democratically legitimated by the
overwhelming GDR vote in March 1990 and confirmed by the national election in
December 1990. In contrast to the Second Reich, the acceptance of all borders as
permanent and the drying up of ethnic diasporas seemed to augur well for a more
peaceful future in an integrating Europe.27

Beyond the National Narrative: Implications of Reunification for Recent German History 505

29 Peter E. Quint, The Imperfect Union: Constitutional Structures of German Unification (Princeton, 1997); and
Wolfgang Schluchter, Neubeginn durch Anpassung? Studien zum ostdeutschen bergang (Frankfurt/Main, 1996).
30 Jrgen Kocka, Die Vereinigungskrise. Zur Geschichte der Gegenwart (Gttingen, 1995). Cf. Wolfgang Seibel,
Verwaltete Illusionen. Die Privatisierung der ostdeutschen Wirtschaft durch die Treuhandanstalt und ihre Nachfolger
19902000 (Frankfurt/Main, 2005); and Schroeder, Vernderte Republik, pp. 199301.
31 Gerhard A Ritter, Der Preis der deutschen Einheit. Die Wiedervereinigung und die Krise des Sozialstaats (Munich,
2006). Cf. Martin Diewald, Anne Goedicke and Karl Ulrich Mayer (eds), After the Fall of the Wall: Life Courses in the
Transformation of East Germany (Stanford, 2006).

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strong regional allegiances in Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia, rooting the five new
states in popular affection. Finally the adoption of the complex web of official regulations
was speeded by development helpers who advised on the renewal of the bureaucracy,
even if these were often derided as Besserwessis.29 On the surface the new system
functioned surprisingly well, but it left little room for the incorporation of Eastern
preferences, such as the right to abortion, and therefore hid a lingering unease.
In contrast, transformation critics emphasize that the economic unification shock
was so pronounced as to trigger a veritable unification crisis. Although the West profited
initially, in the East production fell by three-quarters, as exposure to international
competition revealed the decrepit state of many state-owned companies. Since the
productivity level was only one-third per capita compared to the FRG, the approximately
1:1.5 currency exchange rate and the quick rise of wages to two-thirds of the Western
level consigned many businesses to bankruptcy. The rapid privatization policy of the
Trusteeship Agency did not help either, because it sold healthy companies to investors
while dissolving those it deemed uncompetitive, although some might have been salvaged
with more government support. The result of such drastic deindustrialization was mass
unemployment at twice the Western rate, affecting especially women, of whom nine out
of ten had worked in the GDR. Unfortunately most of the huge government transfers
went into infrastructure rebuilding and welfare payments rather than into industrial
investment.30 Therefore only a few regions achieved self-sustained growth.
Social observers also note that the adaptation from a collectivist to an individualistic
society disrupted many well-established life courses. The price of access to Western
consumption was the devaluation of all those survival mechanisms essential in a
dictatorship and the need to learn a whole new repertoire of behaviours, such as filling in
life-insurance forms. With the arrival of the market, some important public institutions,
such as walk-in clinics, infant care and youth clubs collapsed as private substitutes
generally failed to pick up the slack. The competitive environment produced a new
group of winners, such as small business owners, civil servants and professionals, but
there were also plenty of losers from the displaced SED nomenklatura who resented the
decline in their status. Because of the Communist past, fewer East Germans than West
Germans owned property, lived in single family homes or had sizable savings, making for
a more proletarian environment. Though welfare transfers, pensions and unemployment
benefits kept most people out of poverty, the drastic drop in the birth-rate and continued
regional depopulation indicated the severity of the adjustment.31
Cultural commentators are still puzzled by the pervasive sense of loss that fuelled an
unexpected wave of n-ostalgia rather than inspiring a feeling of liberation. Some of

506 Konrad H. Jarausch

32 Jana Hensel, After the Wall: Confessions from an East German Childhood and the Life that Came Next (New York,
2004); Andrew Beattie, Playing Politics with History: The Bundestag Inquiries into East Germany (New York, 2008);
Thomas Goldstein, Writing in Red: The East German Writers Union (diss. Chapel Hill, 2010).
33 John E. Gillingham, European Integration, 19502003: Superstate or New Market Economy? (Cambridge, 2003).
Cf. Erhard Joerges et al. (eds), Developing a Constitution for Europe (London, 2004).

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this reaction had to do with the biographical disorientation of young people who had
belonged to the Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ) and been prepared for a future that failed to
materialize. Some of the resentment was also due to the symbolic devaluation of leading
Eastern intellectuals, such as Christa Wolf, who were viciously attacked by Western
cultural critics in the bitter literary debate (Literaturstreit) for supporting the SED. Some
of the revulsion was moreover the product of a media frenzy to scandalize the Stasi
collaboration of informal informants, thousands of whom had honeycombed GDR
society. Finally some of the angry response was the result of displacement complaints by
leading apologists of the Communist dictatorship who had lost their jobs in the
restructuring of the universities and the economy.32 Ironically, many East Germans had
come to feel more different from their West German cousins after unification than
before, because they resented being second class citizens in a country whose cultural
institutions were dominated by Western elites.
But many other developments cannot merely be explained as consequences of
reunification, and historians are forced to adopt different interpretative frames in order
to explain their impact. A case in point is the shift of domestic power from Berlin to
Brussels owing to the progress of European integration after the Maastricht treaty. The
introduction of the Euro as a common currency has replaced the hallowed symbol of the
DM and created a new European bank with supreme authority. Even if the effort at
streamlining European Union (EU) institutional decision-making through a European
constitution initially stalled due to the French and Dutch referendum defeats, the
eventual ratification of the Lisbon treaty has strengthened majority voting and created
new European offices in foreign and defence policy. The German Constitutional Court
has therefore issued an ambivalent opinion, permitting further integration but at the
same time stressing the democracy deficit of European institutions and reaffirming its
own ultimate responsibility for judicial review. Since it no longer fits a purely national
narrative, involvement in Europe as an emergent polity requires a broader view.33
In foreign policy new responsibilities have been thrust upon the FRG, rendering it
impossible for Berlin to act according to the clich that it is an economic giant and a
political dwarf. Fortunately, initial fears of a resurgence of German hegemony have
proved excessive, since preoccupation with rehabilitating the five new states has tied up
energies otherwise directed abroad. Though the FRG was able to avoid participation in
the first Iraq war, subsequent requests from the international community forced a
grudging reconsideration of defence posture, and this led the Constitutional Court in
1994 to authorize out-of-area deployments in the context of multilateral actions by the
United Nations or NATO. After criticism of the premature recognition of Slovenian
and Croatian independence by the German government, the initial posture of noninvolvement in the Balkan wars foundered when the July 1995 massacre in Srebrenica

Beyond the National Narrative: Implications of Reunification for Recent German History 507

34 Hans-Peter Schwarz, Die Zentralmacht Europas. Deutschlands Rckkehr auf die Weltbhne (Berlin, 1994); Helga
Haftendorn, Coming of Age: German Foreign Policy Since 1945 (Lanham, Md, 2006).
35 Hans-Werner Sinn, Can Germany Be Saved? The Malaise of the Worlds First Welfare State (Cambridge, Mass.,
2007). Cf. Konrad H. Jarausch (ed.), Das Ende der Zuversicht? Die Siebziger Jahre als Geschichte (Gttingen, 2008).
36 Rita Chin, The Guest-Worker Question in Postwar Germany (Cambridge, 2007); Konrad H. Jarausch, After Hitler:
Recivilizing Germans 19451995 (New York, 2006), pp. 23963; and the forthcoming dissertation by Sarah
Thomsen Vierra on TurkishGerman interaction.

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made it clear that abstention abetted war crimes on Germanys very door-step. The redgreen coalition therefore felt compelled to participate in the military action to prevent a
recurrence in Kosovo four years later, thus reversing its understanding of the lesson of
the Holocaust.34
Another novel dimension has been the increasing pressure of international
competition, so that drastic adjustments to the welfare state have been needed to enable
Germany to retain its export lead. The double oil-price shocks of 1973 and 1979
undermined the German model of Rhenish capitalism with its high-wage structure
and extensive social transfers. In contrast to Honeckers Communist consumerism based
on foreign loans, Helmut Kohls soft neo-liberal approachpruning state expenditures,
privatizing some services and reducing welfare benefitssucceeded in reviving
economic growth. While SPD obstruction complicated the post-unification adjustments,
Gerhard Schroeders Agenda 2010 finally cut the knot by reducing transfer payments
sufficiently to spur renewed job growth, though the public backlash cost him the
subsequent election. Concurrently, German companies increased their competitiveness
again by personnel reductions, out-sourcing and union concessions. Hence the weak
growth of the economy during the 1990s was not just a product of unification but also
the result of a painful adjustment to world market competition.35
A final area that has become increasingly problematic due to a popular fear of
strangers is the question of immigration. While the growth of foreign minorities began
with the so-called guest-workers in the 1960s, migration pressures increased drastically
in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the arrival of an unprecedented number of ethnic
remigrants from Eastern Europe, asylum seekers from the Third World and civil war
refugees from the Balkans. Since the Right denied that Germany was an immigration
country while the Left believed in multicultural laissez-faire, the coalition between the
CDU and the Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP) restricted the influx through administrative
measures. It was only when the red-green coalition eased naturalization for long-time
residents and allowed their children to opt for a German passport that the citizenship law
was finally liberalized. The coalition also pushed through a contentious immigration bill
that tried to offer a regular access channel instead of having to use the claim of asylum.
But some outbreaks of xenophobic violence indicated widespread resentment,
complicating an active integration policy and hampering the recognition of racial and
religious diversity.36
These examples suggest that the history of the two decades between 1990 and 2010
cannot simply be written around the consequences of unification, but that its horizon
needs to be expanded to encompass new problem areas that follow different trajectories.

508 Konrad H. Jarausch

III. Transcending National Narratives

The impact of reunification on overarching narratives of twentieth-century history has
been rather limiting, because the restoration of a democratized nation state has
reaffirmed the traditional framework of interpretation in only minimally altered form.
Overcoming the division has provided a convenient end-point to a national narrative of
imperial hubris, Weimar failure, Third Reich transgression, GDR false start and eventual
FRG redemption. From this perspective, the development of the Federal Republic has
been a success story: starting from the nadir of inhuman crimes and shattering defeat,
gradually it recovered dignity through political Westernization and democratization and
was eventually rewarded for its recivilization by the overthrow of Communism and
reunification with the Eastern states. In contrast to this plot linealso explored in the
present authors After Hitlerlingering reservations of continuing social inequality or a
nervous search for security could be ignored as only minor blemishes on a positive record.
Even for the most of the Left, who previously criticized West Germany, reunification
seems to have validated the FRGs course in retrospect.39
A concomitant of such Western self-congratulation was a systematic delegitimation of
the GDR by exposing its many shortcomings after the fact. The widely publicized
hearings of the Bundestag Commission of Inquiry, the incessant stream of disclosures of
Stasi collaboration and the numerous media scandalizations of East German corruption
have created a predominant image of the SED regime as a repressive, unjust state
(Unrechtsstaat). This negative depiction has recycled Western accusations of Cold War
propaganda and captured the deep-seated resentment of the victims of the Communist
dictatorships. It has failed, however, to address the more positive memories of many East

37 For a survey of the unification assessments see Schroeder, Vernderte Republik, pp. 51176. Cf. Christoph
Klemann, Deutschland einig Vaterland? Politische und gesellschaftliche Verwerfungen im Prozess der deutschen
Vereinigung, Zeithistorische Forschungen, 6, 1 (2009).
38 Grtemaker, Berliner Republik, pp. 58ff., 129 ff. Cf. Konrad H. Jarausch, Anfnge der Berliner Republik (1990
2009), in Ulf Dirlmeier et al., Kleine deutsche Geschichte (Stuttgart, 2009).
39 Winkler, Germany, vol. 2, and Wolfrum, Geglckte Demokratie versus Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Deutsche
Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vol. 5: Bundesrepublik Deutschland und DDR 19491990 (Munich, 2008) and Conze,
Suche nach Sicherheit, passim. Cf. Konrad H. Jarausch, The Federal Republic at Sixty: Popular Myths, Actual
Accomplishments and Competing Interpretations, German Politics and Society, 28 (2010), pp. 1029.

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The many assessments of the degree of unity reached in one state with two societies are
an understandable exercise in political rhetoric, but they hardly contribute to historical
analysis, since they are backwards-looking and assume a homogeneous nation state as an
evaluative criterion.37 European integration, out-of-area deployment, neoliberal
adjustments and immigration conflicts point to different kinds of transnational issues
that go far beyond a restored national narrative. Because many of these trends began
before the fall of the Wall and only gained additional speed thereafter, they indicate the
need to break out of the established teleological framework that culminates in 1989/90.
Only when historians make this interpretative leap will they be able to explore the most
recent period of contemporary development with authority.38

Beyond the National Narrative: Implications of Reunification for Recent German History 509

40 Armin Mitter and Stefan Wolle, Untergang auf Raten. Unbekannte Kapitel der DDR-Geschichte (Munich, 1993) and
Klaus Schroeder, Der SED-Staat. Partei, Staat und Gesellschaft 19491990 (Munich, 1998) versus Mary Fulbrook,
The Peoples State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker (New Haven, 2005) and Konrad H. Jarausch (ed.),
Dictatorship as Experience: Towards a Socio-Cultural History of the GDR (New York, 1999).
41 Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York, 1997). Cf. Martin
Sabrow, Zur Deutungsmacht historischer Zsuren (MS Berlin, 2010). An exception is Grtemaker, Berliner
Republik, pp. 129 ff.
42 Roedder, Deutschland einig Vaterland, p. 15. Cf. Karl Schlgel, ber Rume und Register der Geschichtsschreibung.
Ein Gesprch mit Karl Schlgel, Zeithistorische Forschungen, 1, 3 (2004); Philip Ther, Das neue Europa seit 1989.
berlegungen zu einer Geschichte der Transformationszeit, Zeithistorische Forschungen, 6, 1 (2009).

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Germans who tried to lead a correct life within the wrong system. At the same time it
provoked the ire of former supporters of the regime who cultivated more positive
recollections of their own role in a post-Communist subculture. The laudable academic
effort of more discerning scholars to portray the GDR as a contradictory system of both
repression and everyday normality seems to have had little impact on overall syntheses
of postwar history.40
The 1990 focus of a resurgent national narrative has also inhibited an examination of
the two decades after unification, because these tend to appear merely as a coda to a
story that has already been completed. Owing to the inaccessibility of primary sources
and insufficient temporal distance, historians are generally reluctant to engage with the
history of the present. Moreover, the current fixation on the peaceful revolution has
narrowed the focus to an analysis of the after-effects of unification and prohibited an
intellectual opening to new kinds of problems. In contrast, the caesura of 9/11 plays a
much larger role in the Anglo-American discussion, since it signals an elemental shock to
the perception of US inviolability that has triggered a veritable politics of fear. The
attack on the World Trade Center seemed to validate Samuel Huntingtons clash of
civilizations thesis by replacing Communism with radical Islam as the new enemy. The
crusade against international terrorism, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the conflicts
with Muslim minorities at home have so far hardly made a dent in German historical
perceptions.41
Another unintended consequence of the prevailing Westernization narrative has
been its neglect of the transformation of Eastern Europe, although this played a crucial
role in the overthrow of communism and the acceptance of reunification.
Overemphasizing the importance of the Soviet Union, one recent synthesis begins with
the assertion in the beginning there was Gorbachev, recalling Thomas Nipperdeys
reference to Napoleon. Most interpretations agree that the formation of the independent
Polish trade union Solidarnosc inspired dissident protests and that the Hungarian lifting
of the Iron Curtain helped unleash the mass exodus. But most historical discussions of
the Maastricht agreement are preoccupied with the introduction of the Euro and the
problems of restructuring the EU machinery in Brussels rather than addressing the
implications of the transformation of the East. All too few scholars have taken up Karl
Schlgels somewhat facetious suggestion of celebrating truckers as the vanguard
reconnecting Eastern to Central and Western Europe.42 The enormous significance of
the Eastern expansion of the EU to the restoration of Germanys central position in the
continent has therefore been largely ignored.

510 Konrad H. Jarausch

43 Jrgen Kocka, German History Before Hitler: The Debate about the German Sonderweg, Journal of Contemporary
History, 23 (1988), pp. 316; Nach dem Ende des Sonderwegs. Zur Tragfhigkeit eines Konzepts, in Arnd
Bauerkmper et al. (eds), Doppelte Zeitgeschichte. Deutschdeutsche Beziehungen 19451990 (Bonn, 1998).
44 Anselm Doering-Manteuffel and Lutz Raphael, Nach dem Boom. Perspektiven auf die Zeitgeschichte seit 1970
(Gttingen, 2008); Jarausch, Ende der Zuversicht, pp. 33049.

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The widespread satisfaction with the end of the German Sonderweg has also tended to
block critical thinking about problem areas which have not yet been resolved by it. All too
often the return of a diminished and democratized nation state is interpreted as proof
that the Germans have ceased their efforts to be different and that the FRG has become a
normal Western parliamentary state. Because this development has put an end to the
repeated German attempts at exceptionalism that had such bloody consequences in the
twentieth century, it is quite understandable that many observers are relieved.
Nonetheless, the assertion is not entirely correct, since the German version of postCommunist transformation via the accession of the new states to the existing Federal
Republic differs from the internal transformation of existing states in Eastern Europe,
and commentators are divided on the actual results.43 But even if one grants that the
Sonderweg might really have ended, its conclusion has left an interpretative lacuna: with
the old story successfully finished, it is not clear how to interpret what comes next.
Breaking out of the reunification teleology requires a conscious effort to abandon its
past-centred perspective in order to look for the antecedents of the problems of the
present. In the economic field, such a switch points to the crucial importance of the
caesura of 1973, since OPECs oil-price shocks ended the long postwar boom and
inaugurated a period of recessions and weak economic growth. Instead of just being a
product of repeated business downturns, this slow-down signalled a structural
transformation to the third phase of the industrial revolution away from smokestack
production and Fordism to high technology and services. The concurrent sharpening of
world-wide competition, labelled globalization in the 1990s, led to widespread
deindustrialization in coal, steel and shipbuilding, and eventually even the shift of
production of consumer goods such as electronics and cameras to the Far East. The
resulting growth of long-term unemployment has strained the welfare state, so that Kohl
and Schroeder were forced to implement moderate cut-backs.44 Headlines such as these
in the decades since 1990 can only be understood if their origins are explored
transnationally.
Another important problem, bypassed by traditional narratives, is the destruction of
the environment, which transcends national frontiers. In contrast to the fading away
of the peace issue and the slow progress in gender equality, the new social movement
of environmental activism has intensified in recent years. Growing out of local
confrontations about the building of super-highways through neighbourhoods or the
construction of nuclear power plants in, for example, the Badensian village of Wyhl, a
translocal ecology movement formed in the second half of the 1970s that led to the
founding of the Green Party. It coalesced around quality-of-life issues, focusing on the
reduction of air pollution, the cleaning up of water supplies and the propagation of
organic foods. To combat the oil crises and the fouling of the air by coal power-plants,

Beyond the National Narrative: Implications of Reunification for Recent German History 511

45 Andrei S. Markovits, The German Left: Red, Green and Beyond (New York, 1993); and the dissertation of Steve
Milder (University of North Carolina) on the spread of anti-nuclear protests.
46 Karen Hagemann, Konrad H. Jarausch and Cristina Allemann-Ghionda (eds), Children, Families, and States: Time
Policies of Childcare, Preschool and Primary Education in Europe (New York, 2011); Konrad H. Jarausch, Vorbild
Amerika. Schwierigkeiten transatlantischen Borgens bei der Universittsreform, in Manfred Rudersdorf, Wolfgang
Hpken and Martin Schlegel (eds), Wissen und Geist. Universittskulturen (Leipzig, 2009), pp. 15776.
47 Gerhard Schroeder, Entscheidungen. Mein Leben in der Politik (Hamburg, 2006) and Joschka Fischer, Die rot-grnen
Jahre. Deutsche Auenpolitikvom Kosovo bis zum 11. September (Cologne, 2007).

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activists focused on the promotion of renewable sources of energy through wind

generation and solar power, making the FRG a leader in the field of alternative energy.45
Owing to the fear of global warming, saving the climate has become an important issue
of international politics that has yet to be integrated into larger narratives.
Yet another controversial problem where international pressures have forced overdue
reform efforts is the modernization of the German education system. Since the initiatives
of the 1968 critics were stopped by political resistance and fiscal constraints, changing
institutional arrangements has been exceedingly difficult. Moreover, with unification,
West German structures, themselves in need of reform, were extended to the new states.
At the primary level, progressive educators have long criticized the lack of all-day
childcare and infant schooling that has made it difficult for women to combine work and
motherhood in the FRG, producing one of the lowest birth-rates in Europe. At the
secondary level, the comparison by the OECD Programme for International Student
Assessment (PISA) revealed that the tripartite segmentation of the German system
into Hauptschule, Realschule and Gymnasiumfor entry to blue-collar, white-collar
and professional jobs respectivelywas producing inadequate results and reinforcing
societal divisions. At the university level, the Bologna process has compelled the
controversial introduction of an intermediary BA and a more selective MA in order to
make German degrees more internationally compatible.46 Such conflicts cannot be
analysed on a national basis only.
A final instance of an entirely new problem area is the threat of international terrorism
that made it impossible for Berlin to remain an uninvolved bystander. The dramatic
pictures of the attack on the World Trade Center of 9/11 triggered a wave of sympathy
with the US because some of it had been prepared from German soil. Solidarity with the
human suffering led the Schroeder-Fischer government to tighten domestic security
measures and authorize participation in the anti-terrorist war in Afghanistanan
unthinkable commitment in the Bonn Republic. Yet the SPD/Green coalition refused to
join President George W. Bushs Second Iraq War, since it was not convinced by the claims
of weapons of mass destruction or of Al-Qaeda being behind Saddam Hussein. The
impromptu coalition formed with France, Russia and China demonstrated a growing
independence in the pursuit of national interests, which secured red-greens re-election in
2002. Though striving to remain a reliable partner by supporting the eastern expansion
of NATO and the EU, Berlin slowly developed a more assertive international role.47
Again, dealing with such developments requires a broader frame of reference.
These examples, to which other instances could be added, indicate that long-range
developments and short-range crises increasingly transcend the conventional unification

512 Konrad H. Jarausch

IV. A Second Chance

In Fritz Sterns fortuitous phrase, reunification has given the Germans a second chance
at constructing a democratic national statehopefully with more positive consequences
for their neighbours and themselves.49 This unforeseen event has added 1989 as a new
narrative teleology beyond 1933 (why did Hitler come to power?) or 1941 (how could
Germans commit such crimes?) , pointing to a joyous moment of democratic awakening
that engulfed all of Eastern Europe.50 The surprising peaceful revolution and the astute
statesmanship of Helmut Kohl revived a German nation state at a moment when most
Eastern intellectuals were still building a better Socialism and most Western thinkers
were hoping to promote European integration.51 For historians this unexpected
development poses a double challenge: on the one hand, they have to find convincing
explanations for an outcome which they did not foresee, and on the other, they have to
rethink the meaning of a story that previously justified division as punishment for Nazi
crimes and as guarantee of peace in Europe.
Rethinking the national narrative so as to keep it from sliding back into a dangerous
nationalism will require at the very minimum four interpretative changes. To begin with,
such an effort needs to address the causal relationship between the catastrophic first and
the more benign second half of the twentieth century. For German history, the enormous
suffering of the World Wars and the Holocaust prevents a Whig interpretation of
ineluctable liberalization, since that would be an irresponsible oversimplification. While
a consideration of the twentieth century can depart from the modernizing aspirations of

48 Daniel Bell, The Coming of Postindustrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting (New York, 1973); Jean-Franois
Lyotard, Towards the Postmodern (Atlantic Highlands, NJ, 1993); and Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New
Modernity (London, 1992).
49 Fritz Stern, Five Germanies I Have Known (New York, 2006), p. 194 ff. Cf. John Breuillys Conclusion in Speirs and
Breuilly, Germanys Two Unifications, pp. 30716. See also Anne Saadah, Germanys Second Chance: Trust, Justice
and Democratization (Cambridge, Mass., 1998).
50 Helmut Walser Smith, The Continuities of German History: Nation, Religion and Race across the Long Nineteenth
Century (Cambridge, 2008).
51 Konrad H. Jarausch, The Double Disappointment: Revolution, Unification and German Intellectuals, in Michael
Geyer, The Power of Intellectuals in Contemporary Germany (Chicago, 2001), pp. 276 ff.

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narrative. Globalization, environmental protection, educational reform and containment

of terrorism are cross-cutting issues which have developed since the 1970s and affected
most advanced countries. This emerging constellation of problems has variously been
called post-industrial society, post-modernity or risk-societybut none of the labels has
so far stuck, because each highlights only one aspect of a series of bewildering changes.48
Analysing German responses to such challenges therefore requires quite a different,
transnational approach that compares the general pattern with a specific set of national
reactions. Moreover, the incompleteness of developments necessitates an open-ended
narrative strategy that relates the evolution of a problem without knowing its resolution
an unusual and uncomfortable stance for a historian. Instead of explaining a known
outcome, scholars now have to muster the courage to address ongoing processes.

Beyond the National Narrative: Implications of Reunification for Recent German History 513

52 Ulrich Herbert, Liberalisierung als Lernprozess. Die Bundesrepublik in der deutschen Geschichte, in Herbert (ed.),
Wandlungsprozesse in Westdeutschland. Belastung, Integration, Liberalisierung 19451980 (Gttingen, 2003),
pp. 752. Cf. Arndt Bauerkmper et al. (eds), Demokratiewunder. Transatlantische Mittler und die kulturelle
ffnung Westdeutschlands 19451970 (Gttingen, 2005).
53 Konrad H. Jarausch, Die Teile als Ganzes erkennen. Zur Integration der beiden deutschen Nachkriegsgeschichten,
Zeithistorische Forschungen, 1 (2004), p. 1030; and Christoph Klemann and Peter Lautzas (eds), Teilung und
Integration. Die doppelte deutsche Nachkriegsgeschichte als wissenschaftliches und didaktisches Phnomen
(Schwalbach, 2006).
54 Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (rev. edn, New York, 2006). Cf. Perry Anderson, A New
Germany?, New Left Review, 47 (May/June 2009), p. 5 ff.

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the late Empire, it must also confront the chauvinism of the First World War, the failure
of the democratic experiment in Weimar, the repressive racism of the Third Reich and
even the misguided Socialist renewal of the GDR. Given all these problematic
manifestations, the challenge is to explain the miraculous transformation through the
collective learning processes after 1945 which led West Germans to see human rights
and democratic institutions as essential aspects of a civility that would improve their
living standards and guarantee a more humane society.52
Another task is the writing of an integrated postwar history that does not privilege the
FRG as standard for dismissing the GDR, since both claimed to represent Germany
during the Cold War. While the Austrians quickly took up the Allied offer to return to
independence, the two successor states in East and West asymmetrically competed with
each other to construct a better Germany, even if East Berlin looked more to Bonn than
vice versa. How can one tell this double story without reducing it to the contrast between
a repressive dictatorship and an attractive democracy in which only the latter counts,
since it won the contest after all? One possible approach might be to focus on shared
problems, such as Allied occupation, or on cross-cutting external influences, such as US
rock music, in order to explore their similarities and differences. Another method might
be to analyse the respective patterns of Eastern and Western biographies, especially of
border-crossers such as Biermann or Dutschke who experienced both systems. Such
perspectives would reveal the growing divergence between the two states while at the
same time uncovering some of the socio-cultural commonalities that eventually made
reunification possible.53
Yet another move would be to extend contemporary history to a systematic
consideration of the drastic changes during the two decades following 1990, which are
still masked by an appearance of stability. In contrast to Francis Fukuyamas prediction
of the ascendancy of liberal capitalism, history has continued to present all sorts of
messy problems that were not foreseen during the euphoria of 1989/90.54 In socioeconomic terms the caesura of 1973, with the end of Bretton Woods and the first oilprice shock has started to loom larger, because it signalled the end of the postwar boom
and the onset of a structural transition to the third phase of the industrial revolution.
Many of the recent problems, such as long-term unemployment, weak growth and the
overstraining of the welfare states, have their origin in these developments. From a
foreign policy perspective, 9/11 is an equally significant turning-point, because it
inaugurated the present confrontation with international terrorism, the conflict with

514 Konrad H. Jarausch

Abstract
This essay addresses the interpretative implications of German unification. It first suggests that the explanatory challenge is to trace the precise interaction between the international framework of dtente and the
internal dynamics of the democratic awakening. It then posits that part of the history of the years 1990
2010 in Germany, sometimes referred to as the Berlin Republic, can be understood as working out the
consequences of unification; but a growing part is also composed of other issues such as globalization, immigration and educational reform. And it finally argues that the resumption of the national narrative is a
backward-looking perspective that blocks the recognition of more recent problem areas that cannot be
dealt with by telling a success story about the Federal Republic, but require an engagement with issues of
postmodern modernity.
Keywords:reunification, the Federal Republic, globalization, peaceful revolution, Berlin Republic, Cold
War, terrorism

University of North Carolina

jarausch@email.unc.edu

55 Thorsten Schller (ed.), Historische Einschnitte und ihre mediale Verarbeitung (Bielefeld, 2010).
56 Jrgen Osterhammel, Die Verwandlung der Welt. Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 2009). Cf. Gunilla
Budde (ed.), Transnationale Geschichte. Themen, Tendenzen, Theorien (Gttingen, 2006).
57 Jan Zielonka, Europe as Empire: The Nature of the Enlarged European Union (Oxford, 2006). Cf. Andreas Wirsching,
Geschichte Europas seit 1989 (forthcoming, Munich, 2011).

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radical Islam and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. An opening of the German narrative
to such new problem areas is already long overdue.55
Finally, the writing of German history must be transnationalized if we are to account
for its complex entanglement with continental and global developments. Owing to their
central location in Europe, German speakers have always been more involved with their
neighbours than the national narrative has tended to show, whether through wars or
peaceful exchanges.56 At present the crisis-ridden process of European integration has
made this aspect more visible through both the growing power of common EU
institutions and the difficulties of coordinating economic policies to combat the financial
crisis in the Euro-zone. At the same time, increasing trade and migration have brought
the world home to the Germans in the form of new products or residents from different
backgrounds, and these have created both prosperity and insecurity. Misled by
assumptions of past stability, German historians have yet to recognize this growing
fluidity within and beyond Europe.57 Only a denationalized and democratized narrative
will be able fully to reflect such new and complex problems after reunification.